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Tor Connection assistant

Tails 4.20 completely changes how to connect to the Tor network from Tails.

After connecting to a local network, a Tor Connection assistant helps you connect to the Tor network.

This new assistant is most useful for users who are at high risk of physical surveillance, under heavy network censorship, or on a poor Internet connection:

It protects better the users who need to go unnoticed if using Tor could look suspicious to someone who monitors their Internet connection (parental control, abusive partner, school or work network, etc.).
It allows people who need to connect to Tor using bridges to configure them without having to change the default configuration in the Welcome Screen.
It helps first-time users understand how to connect to a local Wi-Fi network.
It provides feedback while connecting to Tor and helps troubleshoot network problems.

We know that this assistant is still far from being perfect, even if we have been working on this assistant since February. If anything is unclear, confusing, or not working as you would expect, please send your feedback to tails-dev@boum.org (public mailing list).

This first release of the Tor Connection assistant is only a first step. We will add more improvements to it in the coming months to:

Save Tor bridges to the Persistent Storage (#5461)
Help detect when Wi-Fi is not working (#14534)
Detect if you have to sign in to the local network using a captive portal (#5785)
Synchronize the clock to make it easier to use Tor bridges in Asia (#15548)
Make it easier to learn about new Tor bridges (#18219, #15331)

Changes and updates

Update OnionShare from 1.3.2 to 2.2.

This major update adds a feature to host a website accessible from a Tor onion service.
Update KeePassXC from 2.5.4 to 2.6.2.

This major update comes with a redesign of the interface.
Update Tor Browser to 10.5.2.
Update Thunderbird to 78.11.0.
Update Tor to 0.4.5.9.
Update the Linux kernel to 5.10.46. This should improve the support for newer hardware (graphics, Wi-Fi, and so on).
Rename MAC address spoofing as MAC address anonymization in the Welcome Screen.

Fixed problems

Automatic upgrades

Made the download of upgrades and the handling of errors more robust. (#18162)
Display an error message when failing to check for available upgrades. (#18238)

Tails Installer

Made the display of the Reinstall button more robust. (#18300)
Make the Install and Upgrade unavailable after a USB stick is removed. (#18346)

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

Automatic upgrades are broken from Tails 4.14 and earlier.

To upgrade from Tails 4.14 or earlier, you can either:
- Do a manual upgrade.
- Fix the automatic upgrade from a terminal. To do so:
  1. Start Tails and set up an administration password.
  2. In a terminal, execute the following command:
```
torsocks curl --silent https://tails.boum.org/isrg-root-x1-cross-signed.pem \
| sudo tee --append /usr/local/etc/ssl/certs/tails.boum.org-CA.pem \
&& systemctl --user restart tails-upgrade-frontend
```
    This command is a single command that wraps across several lines. Copy and paste the entire block at once and make sure that it executes as a single command.
  3. Approximately 30 seconds later, you should be prompted to upgrade to the latest version of Tails. If no prompt appears, you might already be running the latest version of Tails.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 4.20

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are broken from Tails 4.14 and earlier. See the known issue above.
Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 4.14 or later to 4.20.

You can reduce the size of the download of future automatic upgrades by doing a manual upgrade to the latest version.
If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.

To install Tails on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

The Persistent Storage on the USB stick will be lost if you install instead of upgrading.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 4.20 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 4.21 is scheduled for August 10.

Have a look at our roadmap to see where we are heading to.

Posted 2021-07-13 Tags: announce

Highlights

We entirely rewrote and redesigned our very old warnings page.

The new warnings page is shorter, easier to understand by less technical people, less scary, more helpful, and visually attractive. We also integrated it in our download page so that people can learn more about tails while waiting for their download.

Read our articles on:
We finished making Tails ready for the deprecation of onion services v2 by upgrading to OnionShare 2.2.
We explained that users can reduce the size of the download of future automatic upgrades by doing a manual upgrade to the latest version.
We published our finances for 2020.
We documented better MAT and metadata.
We documented how to use Dino in Tails.

Dino is being considered as an option to replace Pidgin in Tails.

Please report your findings!

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 629 659 times this month. This makes 20 989 boots a day on average.

How do we know this?

Posted 2021-07-12

Contribute to Tails by testing our release candidate for Tails 4.20!

We are very excited about it and cannot wait to hear your feedback :)

What's new in 4.20~rc1?

Tails 4.20, scheduled for July 13, will completely change how to connect to the Tor network from Tails. We would like as many people as possible to test this release candidate to be able to fix as many problems as possible before we release 4.20 to all users.

Over the years, we have identified many issues in how to connect to the Tor network from Tails, thanks to your feedback. With this release candidate, we are trying to solve the most important and pressing of these issues:

The lack of feeback while connecting to the Tor network.
The option to use Tor bridges has to be turned on in the Welcome Screen and cannot be changed afterwards.
The lack of default Tor bridges.
The previous configuration screen for Tor bridges wasn't accessible to people who use the screen reader.
The lack of guidance when Tails is not connected to a local network yet.

What's new since 4.19~rc1?

The Tor Connection experience has had several improvements and bugfixes since 4.19~rc1.
OnionShare was upgraded to 2.2, which features significant changes compared to version 1.3.2 that we used to ship.

For more details, read our changelog.

Get Tails 4.20~rc1

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

If you are running Tails 4.2 or later, you can upgrade like this:

Start Tails and set an administration password.
Connect to the network and make sure Tor is connected successfully.
If you are running Tails 4.19~rc1 you must run this command in a Terminal or you will experience issues:
```
torsocks curl --silent https://tails.boum.org/isrg-root-x1-cross-signed.pem \
| sudo tee --append /usr/local/etc/ssl/certs/tails.boum.org-CA.pem
```
Enter the administration password when asked for the "password for amnesia".
Run this command in a Terminal:
```
echo TAILS_CHANNEL=\"alpha\" | sudo tee -a /etc/os-release && \
     tails-upgrade-frontend-wrapper
```
Enter the administration password when asked for the "password for amnesia".
After the upgrade is applied, restart Tails and choose Applications ▸ Tails ▸ About Tails to verify that you are running Tails 4.20~rc1.

Download Tails 4.20~rc1

Download and install Tails 4.20~rc1 as usually.

All the data on this USB stick will be lost. Don't install Tails 4.20~rc1 on any USB stick that already has a Persistent Storage, upgrade instead.

Direct download

For USB sticks (USB image)
?OpenPGP signature
SHA256SUM: 7b37ad1cb5cf8e8184676b1ac3d3a66e58dbfa70bf4c13f32f769df304eddd71
For DVDs and virtual machines (ISO image)
?OpenPGP signature
SHA256SUM: bc4cc51e7e0bc570ccf716aa06f151ca432ba8e78d25861d89b6d5d338aebcdc

BitTorrent download

What to test in Tails 4.20~rc1?

We think Tails 4.20~rc1 is in pretty good shape, but it still has a few rough edges. We need your help to identify as many new problems as possible!

We are particularly interested in any issues you experience with time syncing, especially when reported using WhisperBack. Also, we really appreciate testing of diverse and rare network configurations:

When connecting to Tor without bridges fails.
When Tails is not connected to a local network yet.
When disconnecting from a Wi-Fi network with Internet connectivity and then reconnecting to a different Wi-Fi network without Internet connectivity.
When disconnecting from Wi-Fi network that don't require Tor bridges and the reconnecting to different Wi-Fi network that requires Tor bridges.
When connecting to a Tor bridge that works at first but then stops working.
When connecting to the Internet using a proxy.

Tell us if anything is unclear, confusing, or not working as you would expect.

Please, send your feedback to tails-testers@boum.org (public mailing list).

If you are comfortable with the command line, check our hacking tips. They contain firewall rules that can be used to block access to the Tor network without bridges or simulate a broken bridge.

Known issues in 4.20~rc1

Korean and Polish localization is not available. We will attempt to fix this in the final Tailss 4.20 release.

What's coming next?

Tails 4.20 will be the first release of a series of improvements to connect to Tor. Next, we will work on:

Saving Tor bridges to the Persistent Storage (#5461)
Detecting better when the computer has no supported Wi-Fi hardware (#14534)
Detecting captive portals (#5785)
Helping people fixing their clock when failing to connect to obfs4 bridges (#15548)

The learn more about our plans, read our blueprint on network connection.

Happy testing!

Posted 2021-07-02 Tags: announce

Highlights of the month

Improving the experience of connecting to Tor

In May, the coders' main focus were on improving the experience of connecting to Tor in Tails, which we first showed off in Tails 4.19~beta1 and later with some improvements in Tails 4.19~rc1. We had initially planned to include this new work in 4.19 but we decided at the last minute to postpone it: we did not feel confident enough that the whole thing was robust enough to unleash it onto our users. Our current plan is to have this work released in Tails 4.20 on July 13.

One aspect of this work that may be interesting for some of you is that we defined for guidelines for non-user-initiated non-Tor Internet activity in Tails. We haven't implemented any such activity yet, but we plan to do so in the next few months, in particular to detect captive portals and test bridge reachability. If you're curious, have a look at the changes yourself!

Prevent future automatic upgrade issues

We grew tired of breaking automatic upgrades every few months due to changes in how Let's Encrypt certificates are signed, which we clearly are not managing to predict, and adjust to, before it harms our users. So for now, we disabled CA pinning for Tails Upgrader.

Translations

All the website

de: 26% (1844) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy
es: 52% (3689) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
fa: 19% (1374) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy
fr: 91% (6429) strings translated, 1% strings fuzzy
it: 34% (2428) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
pt: 18% (1273) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website

de: 44% (930) strings translated, 23% strings fuzzy
es: 89% (1895) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
fa: 19% (416) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy
fr: 99% (2092) strings translated, 0% strings fuzzy
it: 67% (1422) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy
pt: 39% (821) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website for languages not activated on the website yet

ar: 6% (129) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
ca: 6% (131) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
id: 4% (102) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
pl: 6% (140) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy
ru: 33% (692) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
sr_Latn: 3% (72) strings translated, 3% strings fuzzy
tr: 6% (145) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy
zh: 9% (204) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
zh_TW: 20% (432) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 637205 times this month. This makes 20555 boots a day on average.

How do we know this?

Posted 2021-06-24

Our services will be down for maintenance on Tuesday June 8th between 12:00 and 15:00 UTC. We'll be changing the IP address of our main server. We expect the actual switch to be quick. However, it might take some time for everything to be back up and running while the changes to our DNS records propagate.

During that period, our website will be offline and Tails upgrades will not work.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Posted 2021-06-04

We worked very hard last week to get ready to release the work on the connection to Tor that we have been showing you in 4.19~beta1 and 4.19~rc1. We made a lot of progress but didn't feel confident enough to release it today.

So, we are releasing 4.19 as a regular upgrade and will release this work in 4.20. We will publish an updated rc2 in the coming days with even more improvements on the connection to Tor.

Changes and updates

Stop pinning the TLS certificate of our website when doing automatic upgrades.

We broke automatic upgrades twice recently; once in December in 4.14 and again during a few days on May 15. These 2 times, it was the consequence of a security feature: the pinning of the TLS certificate of our website when doing automatic upgrades.

We removed this feature because the recent problems proved us that this feature was not worth it if it makes us break automatic upgrades that often. (#18324)

Our upgrades are still as strongly authenticated as they are signed using OpenPGP by our team.
Add visual feedback when typing an administration password with sudo in a terminal:
```
amnesia@amnesia:~$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for amnesia: ******** 
```
Update Tor Browser to 10.0.17.
Update Thunderbird to 78.10.0.

For more details, read our changelog.

Known issues

None specific to this release.

See the list of long-standing issues.

Get Tails 4.19

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades are broken from Tails 4.14 and earlier. See the known issue above.
Automatic upgrades are available from Tails 4.14 or later to 4.19.
If you cannot do an automatic upgrade or if Tails fails to start after an automatic upgrade, please try to do a manual upgrade.

To install Tails on a new USB stick

Follow our installation instructions:

The Persistent Storage on the USB stick will be lost if you install instead of upgrading.

To download only

If you don't need installation or upgrade instructions, you can download Tails 4.19 directly:

What's coming up?

Tails 4.20 is scheduled for July 13.

Have a look at our roadmap to see where we are heading to.

Posted 2021-06-01 Tags: announce

Releases

Tails 4.18 was released on April 20.

Tails 4.19 is scheduled for June 1.

Changes and updates

Removed "Synchronizing the system's clock" notification when connecting to Tor network
Removed Poedit

Code

Documentation and website

User experience

Implemented parts of the redesigned network connection configuration

Highlights:

Users can opt for default bridges.
Users see progress status for Tor bootstrap even if they don't use bridges.
The Tor configuration interface is now accessible and compatible with Wayland.
We don't depend on Tor Launcher.

Press and testimonials

We notice the nomination of Tails in two different classes:

Privacy and Security Tools for 2021

From:https://restoreprivacy.com/privacy-tools/

Tails is another privacy-focused operating system that can be run live on a USB drive, CD, or SD card.
The End Of Student Privacy? Remote Proctoring's Invasiveness and Bias

From: https://privacylab.yale.edu/

Education: Teaching privacy, security, and anonymity concepts through reading groups and hands-on workshops. Implementation: Hosting Tor relays/wireless access points and providing the TAILS operating system.

Translations

Core pages of the website

de: 44% (934) strings translated, 23% strings fuzzy
es: 90% (1909) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
fa: 19% (417) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy
fr: 85% (1788) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
it: 67% (1407) strings translated, 15% strings fuzzy
pt: 39% (824) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy

All the website

de: 26% (1855) strings translated, 14% strings fuzzy
es: 53% (3719) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
fa: 19% (1377) strings translated, 12% strings fuzzy
fr: 84% (5900) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
it: 34% (2414) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
pt: 18% (1278) strings translated, 9% strings fuzzy

Core pages of the website for languages not activated on the website yet

ar: 7% (162) strings translated, 8% strings fuzzy
ca: 7% (163) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
id: 6% (133) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
pl: 7% (165) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy
ru: 23% (502) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy
sr_Latn: 5% (109) strings translated, 4% strings fuzzy
tr: 8% (174) strings translated, 6% strings fuzzy
zh: 11% (234) strings translated, 7% strings fuzzy
zh_TW: 22% (463) strings translated, 13% strings fuzzy

Metrics

Tails has been started more than 742 093 times this month. This makes 24 736 boots a day on average.

How do we know this?

Posted 2021-05-25

Contribute to Tails by testing our release candidate for Tails 4.19!

We are very excited about it and cannot wait to hear your feedback :)

What's new in 4.19~rc1?

Tails 4.19, scheduled for June 1, will completely change how to connect to the Tor network from Tails. We would like as many people as possible to test this beta version to be able to fix as many problems as possible before we release 4.19 to all users.

Over the years, we have identified many issues in how to connect to the Tor network from Tails, thanks to your feedback. With this beta, we are trying to solve the most important and pressing of these issues:

The lack of feeback while connecting to the Tor network.
The option to use Tor bridges has to be turned on in the Welcome Screen and cannot be changed afterwards.
The lack of default Tor bridges.
The previous configuration screen for Tor bridges wasn't accessible to people who use the screen reader.
The lack of guidance when Tails is not connected to a local network yet.

What's new since 4.19~beta1?

The Tor Connection experience has had several improvements and bugfixes since 4.19~beta1. For more details, read our changelog.

If you manually upgraded from Tails 4.12 or earlier to 4.19~beta1 and did the Thunderbird OpenPGP migration then your keys are not protected by the master password (#18316, Mozilla bug). They are still protected by the persistent storage's encrypting, but once that is unlocked the keys are unprotected. This should be fixed in the final Tails 4.19.

Get Tails 4.19~rc1

To upgrade your Tails USB stick and keep your persistent storage

Automatic upgrades to Tails 4.19~rc1 are available from versions 4.2 or later.

If you installed 4.19~beta1 you should automatically be asked to upgrade the next time you start it.

If you are running Tails 4.2 to 4.18, you can upgrade like this:
1. Start Tails and set an administration password.
2. Run this command in a Terminal:
```
echo TAILS_CHANNEL=\"alpha\" | sudo tee -a /etc/os-release && \
     tails-upgrade-frontend-wrapper
```
  Enter the administration password when asked for the "password for amnesia".
3. After the upgrade is applied, restart Tails and choose Applications ▸ Tails ▸ About Tails to verify that you are running Tails 4.19~rc1.

Download Tails 4.19~rc1

Download and install Tails 4.19~rc1 as usually.

All the data on this USB stick will be lost. Don't install Tails 4.19~rc1 on any USB stick that already has a Persistent Storage, upgrade instead.

Direct download

For USB sticks (USB image)
OpenPGP signature|torrents/files/tails-amd64-4.19~rc1.img.sig]]
SHA256SUM: f0d60fe7ff6bd29733937eee09e31a928e6cc0924ede33d688235a35c8a0042c
For DVDs and virtual machines (ISO image)
OpenPGP signature|torrents/files/tails-amd64-4.19~rc1.iso.sig]]
SHA256SUM: 2ccd2c02836d5a2d840a07cbfa8f3b73246813b5f387ce5c12b3e30bf17bc4f1

BitTorrent download

What to test in Tails 4.19~rc1?

We know that Tails 4.19~rc1 still has many rough edges. But we still need your help to identify as many new problems as possible!

We're particularly interested in you testing diverse and rare network configurations:

When connecting to Tor without bridges fails.
When Tails is not connected to a local network yet.
When disconnecting from a Wi-Fi network with Internet connectivity and then reconnecting to a different Wi-Fi network without Internet connectivity.
When disconnecting from Wi-Fi network that don't require Tor bridges and the reconnecting to different Wi-Fi network that requires Tor bridges.
When connecting to a Tor bridge that works at first but then stops working.
When connecting to the Internet using a proxy.

Tell us if anything is unclear, confusing, or not working as you would expect.

Please, send your feedback to tails-testers@boum.org (public mailing list).

If you are comfortable with the command line, check our hacking tips. They contain firewall rules that can be used to block access to the Tor network without bridges or simulate a broken bridge.

Known issues in 4.19~rc1

Korean and Polish localization is not available (#18319). We will attempt to fix this in the final Tailss 4.19 release.

What's coming next?

Tails 4.19 will be the first release of a series of improvements to connect to Tor. Next, we will work on:

Saving Tor bridges to the Persistent Storage (#5461)
Detecting better when the computer has no supported Wi-Fi hardware (#14534)
Detecting captive portals (#5785)
Helping people fixing their clock when failing to connect to obfs4 bridges (#15548)

The learn more about our plans, read our blueprint on network connection.

Happy testing!

Posted 2021-05-14 Tags: announce

As many of you noticed, our main server was offline from Friday April 30 19:09 UTC until Monday May 3 05:58 UTC.

This was caused by a hardware failure in one of the many Power Distribution Units on the rack where our main server is hosted. Riseup, also hosted in the same datacenter, suffered from the same hardware failure.

Unfortunately, the outage impacted all Tails users: upgrades were failing and our website was not appearing when starting Tor Browser.

Some of you were afraid that the Tails infrastructure could have gone under an attack of some sort. This does not seem to have been the case. The actual reasons for the power glitch are still being investigated, but all indicates that it was a simple hardware failure. There are no signs of malicious activity whatsoever.

It took us so much time to bring it back online because of a bad configuration of our notification system. Our sysadmins only learned about the outage when coming back to work on Monday.

To avoid such long delay in the future, we will make our notification system more resilient.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Posted 2021-05-05

Contribute to Tails by testing our beta for Tails 4.19!

We are very excited about it and cannot wait to hear your feedback :)

What's new in 4.19~beta1?

The lack of feeback while connecting to the Tor network.
The option to use Tor bridges has to be turned on in the Welcome Screen and cannot be changed afterwards.
The lack of default Tor bridges.
The previous configuration screen for Tor bridges wasn't accessible to people who use the screen reader.
The lack of guidance when Tails is not connected to a local network yet.

Download Tails 4.19~beta1

Tails 4.19~beta1 has not been tested at all, as we usually do for new versions of Tails. Only use Tails 4.19~beta1 for testing!

Download and install Tails 4.19~beta1 as usually.

All the data on this USB stick will be lost. Don't install Tails 4.19~beta1 on any USB stick that already has a Persistent Storage.

Direct download

For USB sticks (USB image)
OpenPGP signature|torrents/files/tails-amd64-4.19~beta1.img.sig]]
SHA256SUM: b2b2639b90cea642f203826678c685a1f5b09e2e34f3ccc563864b1b10fa9d5e
For DVDs and virtual machines (ISO image)
OpenPGP signature|torrents/files/tails-amd64-4.19~beta1.iso.sig]]
SHA256SUM: 5f390031a5b33e579a1c60bc06936366663ce7a27ce7bc50398d7074b1013b42

BitTorrent download

What to test in Tails 4.19~beta1?

We know that Tails 4.19~beta11 still has many rough edges. But we still need your help to identify as many new problems as possible!

We're particularly interested in you testing diverse and rare network configurations:

When connecting to Tor without bridges fails.
When Tails is not connected to a local network yet.
When disconnecting from a Wi-Fi network with Internet connectivity and then reconnecting to a different Wi-Fi network without Internet connectivity.
When disconnecting from Wi-Fi network that don't require Tor bridges and the reconnecting to different Wi-Fi network that requires Tor bridges.
When connecting to a Tor bridge that works at first but then stops working.
When connecting to the Internet using a proxy.

Tell us if anything is unclear, confusing, or not working as you would expect.

Please, send your feedback to tails-testers@boum.org (public mailing list).

If you are comfortable with the command line, check our hacking tips. They contain firewall rules that can be used to block access to the Tor network without bridges or simulate a broken bridge.

What's coming next?

Tails 4.19 will be the first release of a series of improvements to connect to Tor. Next, we will work on:

Saving Tor bridges to the Persistent Storage (#5461)
Detecting better when the computer has no supported Wi-Fi hardware (#14534)
Detecting captive portals (#5785)
Helping people fixing their clock when failing to connect to obfs4 bridges (#15548)

The learn more about our plans, read our blueprint on network connection.

Happy testing!

Posted 2021-04-27 Tags: announce

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